Optimizing the Physical Design

Abstract

During the translation from the logical design to the physical design, you must make four kinds of decisions. First, for each table, you have to decide not only whether you should use a heap table, a cluster, or an index-organized table, but also whether it has to be partitioned. Second, you must consider whether you should utilize redundant access structures such as indexes and materialized views. Third, you have to decide how to implement the constraints (not whether you have to implement them). Fourth, you have to decide how data will be stored in blocks, including the order of the columns, what datatypes are to be used, how many rows per block should be stored, or whether compression should be activated. This chapter focuses on the fourth topic only. For information about the others, especially the first two, refer to Chapters 13, 14, and 15.